A structured interview is one where every candidate for a role gets the same job-related questions, in the same order, and every answer is scored against the same rating scale, agreed before the first interview. It takes an hour or two more preparation than a friendly chat. In return you get one of the best predictors of job performance that hiring research has found, and a process that's fairer to candidates because everyone is judged on the same evidence.
Below: how a structured interview differs from the usual kind, what the research actually says, how to set one up in seven steps, an example rating scale, and a bank of 40 questions grouped by skill that you can copy.
Structured vs unstructured interviews
Most interviews are unstructured. The interviewer reads the CV, asks whatever comes to mind, and leaves with a feeling. The feeling is often wrong.
| Unstructured interview | Structured interview | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | Whatever the interviewer thinks of | Written in advance, linked to the job's skills |
| Order | Changes per candidate | The same for everyone |
| Follow-ups | Unlimited, often leading | A short list of neutral prompts |
| Notes | Impressions ("good energy") | What the candidate actually said |
| Scoring | Overall gut feel, after the fact | Each answer rated on an anchored scale, straight away |
| Decision | Whoever argues loudest in the debrief | The evidence, compared like for like |
There's a middle ground, the semi-structured interview: fixed core questions with room for a few unplanned ones. It's better than nothing. The scoring is the part that matters most, so if you only change one thing, change that.
Why bother? What the research says
Researchers measure how well a hiring method predicts later job performance with a number called validity, from 0 (no better than flipping a coin) to 1 (a perfect prediction). Nothing in hiring gets close to 1. Differences of a few tenths are big.
- In the most cited review of the field, Schmidt and Hunter (1998, Psychological Bulletin) put structured interviews at .51 and unstructured interviews at .38. In the same review, years of job experience scored .18 and years of education .10.
- A 2022 re-analysis by Sackett and colleagues (Journal of Applied Psychology) corrected some of the older statistical assumptions. Most numbers came down, but structured interviews came out top of the list at .42, with unstructured interviews at .19.
So the same hour with a candidate is worth roughly twice as much when it's structured. Two more benefits don't show up in the validity numbers:
- Fairness. Everyone gets the same chance to show the same skills. It's much harder for "they remind me of me" to sneak into the decision when the decision is a set of scored answers.
- Better decisions in the debrief. "She scored a 2 on prioritisation, and here's what she said" is a conversation you can actually have. "I just didn't get a good vibe" isn't.
How to run a structured interview in 7 steps
1. Pick the 4–6 skills that matter for this job
Start from the job's must-haves, written as things the person can do. If you wrote your job ad that way (how to write a job description explains how), you already have this list. For a customer support role it might be: written communication, calm under pressure, problem solving, and prioritising a busy queue.
Leave out anything you can check better another way. Hard requirements like working hours or right to work belong in the application form, not the interview.
2. Write one or two questions per skill
Use two kinds:
- Behavioural questions ask about the past: "Tell me about a time you…". Past behaviour is decent evidence of future behaviour. (30 behavioural questions with example answers.)
- Situational questions ask about a realistic future: "What would you do if…". Useful for people early in their careers who don't have many past examples yet.
Write the questions so they're about the actual job. "What would you do if a customer asked for a refund outside our policy?" beats "How do you handle conflict?"
3. Write the rating scale before you interview anyone
This is the step people skip, and it's the one that makes the interview structured. For each question, describe what a weak, an acceptable and a strong answer sounds like. A 1–5 scale with anchors at 1, 3 and 5 is plenty. (There's a full example in the next section.)
4. Agree the follow-up prompts
You'll need to probe, because candidates often answer with "we" when you want "I". Agree a short list of neutral prompts everyone may use:
- "What did you do, specifically?"
- "What happened in the end?"
- "What would you do differently next time?"
- "Can you give me a different example?"
Avoid leading prompts ("So you'd escalate it, right?"). They hand the answer over.
5. Brief the interviewers
Give each interviewer the questions, the rating scale and the skills they own. If two people interview, split the skills rather than both rating everything. Ten minutes of briefing saves an hour of debrief arguments.
6. Run the interview the same way every time
Open with the same short introduction, tell the candidate how the interview works ("I'll ask six questions, I'll take notes, and there's time for your questions at the end"), then ask the questions in order. Write down what the candidate says, not what you think of it. "Refunded the customer, then changed the policy wording so it didn't happen again" is a note. "Seemed proactive" is not.
7. Score straight away, alone, then compare
Score each answer against the scale right after the interview, before you talk to anyone else. Only then compare scores. If you discuss first, the most senior or most confident person tends to set everyone else's numbers. Where scores differ by two points or more, go back to the notes and talk about what was actually said.
Example: a rating scale for one question
Skill: calm under pressure (customer support role) Question: "Tell me about a time a customer was angry with you or your team. What did you do?"
| Score | What the answer sounds like |
|---|---|
| 1 — Weak | No real example, or the story is mainly about how unreasonable the customer was. Ends with the problem passed on or unresolved. |
| 2 | A real example, but vague about their own actions. |
| 3 — Acceptable | A specific example. They stayed polite, worked out the actual problem, and either solved it or handed it on properly. |
| 4 | As 3, with a clear explanation of why they chose that approach. |
| 5 — Strong | As 3, plus they calmed the situation down quickly, followed up afterwards, and did something to stop the same problem happening to the next customer. |
Writing the scale forces you to decide what "good" means before a charming candidate decides it for you.
Structured interview question bank: 40 questions by skill
Ten common skills, four questions each: two behavioural (B) and two situational (S). Pick the skills that match your job, then rewrite the situational questions using real situations from your team.
Problem solving
- (B) Tell me about a problem at work that didn't have an obvious answer. How did you work it out?
- (B) Describe a time you found the cause of a problem everyone else was treating as a one-off.
- (S) You notice a number in a weekly report suddenly doubled. Nobody has mentioned it. What do you do?
- (S) A process you inherited keeps failing in the same way. You have one afternoon. How do you spend it?
A strong answer shows: they find the cause before the fix, check their assumptions, and explain their reasoning in steps.
Communication
- (B) Tell me about a time you had to explain something complicated to someone without your background.
- (B) Describe a message or document you wrote that changed what someone decided.
- (S) You need a busy colleague in another team to do something by Friday. What do you send them?
- (S) A customer has misunderstood your last email and is now annoyed. How do you reply?
A strong answer shows: they think about the reader first, keep it short, and check it landed.
Working with others
- (B) Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague about how to do something. What happened?
- (B) Describe a time you helped a teammate succeed, even though it wasn't your job.
- (S) A colleague keeps missing their part of a shared deadline. What do you do?
- (S) You join a project halfway through and the team already has a way of working you think is slow. What do you do?
A strong answer shows: they deal with disagreement directly but respectfully, and care about the shared result.
Ownership
- (B) Tell me about a mistake you made at work. What did you do next?
- (B) Describe something you improved without being asked.
- (S) You realise a task you finished last week had an error that has now reached a customer. What do you do first?
- (S) Your manager is away, and a decision needs making today that's slightly above your level. What do you do?
A strong answer shows: they own mistakes quickly, fix the immediate problem, then fix the cause.
Prioritising and organisation
- (B) Tell me about a week when you had more to do than time to do it. How did you decide what came first?
- (B) Describe a system you use to keep track of your work.
- (S) Three people each tell you their request is urgent, and you can only finish one today. What do you do?
- (S) Halfway through a project, the deadline moves two weeks earlier. What do you do?
A strong answer shows: a clear way of judging importance, and telling people early when something won't happen.
Learning and adapting
- (B) Tell me about something you had to learn quickly for work. How did you learn it?
- (B) Describe a time your way of doing something changed because of feedback.
- (S) You're given a tool you've never used and a task due tomorrow. What do you do?
- (S) Your team changes a process you liked. How do you handle the first month?
A strong answer shows: a practical method for learning, and no defensiveness about feedback.
Customer focus
- (B) Tell me about a time you went beyond the usual process to help a customer. Was it the right call?
- (B) Describe a time you had to say no to a customer. How did you do it?
- (S) A customer asks for something our policy doesn't allow, and they're a long-standing client. What do you do?
- (S) You notice the same customer complaint coming up again and again. What do you do about it?
A strong answer shows: they balance the customer's needs with the business's, and fix patterns as well as single cases.
Handling pressure
- (B) Tell me about the most stressful day you've had at work. What did you do?
- (B) Describe a time something went wrong in front of a customer or senior colleague.
- (S) A system goes down during your busiest hour and customers are queuing. What are your first three actions?
- (S) You've been given harsh feedback in front of the team. How do you respond in the moment and afterwards?
A strong answer shows: they stay steady, communicate clearly while things are messy, and reflect afterwards.
Leading others (for roles that manage people)
- (B) Tell me about a time you had to give someone difficult feedback.
- (B) Describe a person you helped grow. What did you do, and what changed?
- (S) Two strong people on your team have stopped working well together. What do you do?
- (S) Your team has missed a target and morale is low. What do you do in the first week?
A strong answer shows: they're direct and kind, act early, and measure success by the team's results.
Role-specific skills
- (B) Walk me through a piece of work you're proud of. What were the hardest decisions?
- (B) Tell me about a time your technical or professional judgement turned out to be wrong.
- (S) Here's a short, real example of our work (a ticket, a dataset, a brief). Talk me through how you'd approach it.
- (S) If you started here next month, what would you want to understand in your first two weeks, and why?
A strong answer shows: real depth in the craft, honest trade-offs, and good questions about your context.
Questions 37–40 work best alongside a short work sample: a realistic task the candidate does before the interview, which you then discuss. It's the closest thing to watching them do the job.
Mistakes that quietly unstructure your interview
- Going off-script for "the good ones". If one candidate gets the easy chat and another gets the full set, you're no longer comparing like for like.
- Scoring at the end of the day. By the fourth candidate you've forgotten the first. Score straight after each interview.
- Letting "overall impression" overrule the scores. If your gut disagrees with the numbers, look again at the notes. Sometimes the scale needs fixing. Often the gut needs ignoring.
- Brainteasers. "How many golf balls fit in a plane?" predicts nothing useful. Google's former head of people, Laszlo Bock, said in 2013 that the company had found brainteasers a waste of time.
- Questions you shouldn't ask. Age, family plans, religion, health, nationality and similar topics are off-limits in most countries, and irrelevant to the job anyway. A written question list makes it much harder to wander into them by accident.
- Keeping the format a secret. Tell candidates which skills you'll cover and how the interview works. You're testing the skills, not who guesses the format best.
A copy-paste interview kit
Role: Customer Support Specialist
Interview length: 45 minutes: 5 intro, 30 questions, 10 their questions
Skills and owners: Written communication (Sam) · Calm under pressure (Sam) · Problem solving (Priya) · Prioritising (Priya)
Questions: two per skill, asked in this order: 5, 29, 1, 17, 8, 31, 3, 19 (numbers from the bank above)
Allowed prompts: "What did you do?" · "What happened in the end?" · "What would you do differently?"
Scoring: 1–5 per question using the anchors; score alone, within an hour of the interview
Debrief: compare scores per skill; discuss any gap of 2+ points using the notes
How Provitude helps
Provitude is built around structured, skills-first hiring. Post a job for free and add a short, realistic skills task. Applicants' work is reviewed with names hidden on the first pass. In the hiring workspace you can set up interview kits (what to assess and what to ask) and scorecards. Anyone asked for a scorecard sees colleagues' ratings only after submitting their own, so the loudest voice doesn't set the score.
Post your next job on Provitude and run the whole process, from job ad to debrief, on evidence.
Frequently asked questions
What is a structured interview?
An interview where every candidate gets the same pre-written, job-related questions in the same order, and answers are scored against a rating scale agreed in advance.
What's an example of a structured interview question?
"Tell me about a time you had more work than time. How did you decide what came first?", asked of every candidate and scored on a 1–5 scale with written descriptions of weak, acceptable and strong answers.
How many questions should a structured interview have?
Usually 6–10 for a 45–60 minute interview: one or two per skill, with time for follow-ups and for the candidate's own questions.
Are structured interviews better than unstructured ones?
For predicting job performance, yes. Large reviews of hiring research (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998; Sackett and colleagues, 2022) found structured interviews predict performance considerably better than unstructured ones.